I've been going to school way too long
Monday, March 11, 2002 - 12:28

When I was walking to school this morning, I had an idea for a nother book. This one will be sort of like the Spoon River Anthology, except not in verse. (I can't be expected to be able to write in verse. I did score lower on the verbal part of the GRE than the other sections, after all.) I will write about everything I remember from kindergarten until high school. This will probably be a daunting task, and will doubtless take many many years of diligent writing, because I remember a lot.

Did anyone else have Friday Flip-Up Day in first grade, when the boys would flip up the skirt of any girl silly enough to wear one? We did.

Did anyone else have to walk by a haunted house on the way to school? I did. I had to walk by two, in fact.

I lost my first tooth in kindergarten. I was eating an apple, and I said, "Uh oh, my tooth fell out." I can still hear myself saying it.

My kindergarten picture was horrible. I was laughing or something and had my mouth wide open and my tongue sticking out. I was wearing a horrible blue turtleneck sweater with a HUGE neck frill. I loved that sweater because it was soft.

There was one pink chair in our first grade classroom, and all the girls wanted it. It was slightly bigger than the other chairs. This one girl named Amy had the pink chair, but then one day I went in early and switched the pink chair to my desk. Soon after that, someone else stole it from me.

I stole a pair of Minnie Mouse gloves out of one girl's desk in first grade. Jennifer Johnson (the first one - we had two after third grade). I was going to apologize to her at the end of high school, but she dropped out or something. Probably because of me.

In our reading books in first grade, there was a story about a kid named Pody who didn't want to get his hair cut. Pody was pronounced like poddy. We were shocked that someone would name their kid that.

At recess once in first grade I was digging a hole in the snow with my foot, and my boot got stuck in the snow. Then the teacher blew the whistle, so I had to run back to class with only one boot on.

Still smarting from my kindergarten picture, for my first grade picture I had this demure little Mona Lisa smile that I'd practiced for weeks. When the pictures came back, I thought to myself, "Oh my, what a pretty smile." When my dad saw the pictures, he said, "Why didn't you smile?"

One day it was raining so we were playing inside for recess. My crazy friend Kathy threw some boy's little stub of a pencil out the window. We thought it was hilarious. But then the boy told on her, and she had to go outside and get the pencil.

I peed my pants in second grade, but only one person found out.

See? I have many more stories. I need to start writing this book. Maybe I'll have part of it finished by the high school reunion in two years. I should quit school and start working on this full time.